HOW easy it would have been. Exposed as the landlord of a tenement building that is home to caged dwellers, the Tung Wah Group of Hospitals could have reacted in the way you might have expected from such a noble institution. Yes, it could have said, we were aware of this problem. We have been meaning to do something about it, but we are a very large organisation, and quite honestly, we haven't gotten around to it. But we will now.
Instead, in the week since this newspaper revealed the existence of these squalid dwellings in Tai Kok Tsui, the charity has done just about everything apart from face up to its moral responsibilities. It has wriggled, blustered, hidden behind legal niceties, and in the end, made threatening noises. Don't blame us, it has said, we don't operate the premises. They are run by our tenants, and we cannot do a single thing about it. Our hands are tied by the law. And you had better be careful about what you say about us. Tung Wah's solicitors have written to us and our sister newspaper, the South China Morning Post claiming libel and are demanding a retraction and an apology. However, we are unrepentant.
As if that were not bad enough, Tung Wah chairman, Deborah Kwan Siu Lai-kwan capped an inglorious week for the charity by stating that she couldn't see what the fuss was all about. 'I think the place is not so bad,' she said after our story aroused public interest in the scandal. 'I think I could tolerate living there.' Comments like that take the breath away. Had the words come from the mouth of an unscrupulous money-grubbing landlord, they would have been bad enough. Coming from the head of what is probably Hong Kong's most respected charitable foundations, they were beyond the pale.
It is not too late for Tung Wah to save the situation. The wretched souls of those caged units should be moved out without any delay and offered a home in one of the charity's many premises. Every effort should also be made to ensure that their places are not taken by others equally desperate. Only then can Tung Wah fully live up to its claim of 'enabling senior citizens to live in dignity'.
